Page 49 of Holly Jolly Cake Fight
She was sacrificing for him right now.
“Make sure you thank her,” Mom said sternly when he told her about the extra time.
“I’m not a kid. You don’t need to remind me of that anymore.”
She did her trademark hand-fussing gesture. “You two are competitors. I’ve seen how rude she is with you. But that’s not an excuse to be ungrateful.”
“She’s not rude,maman. She’s hurt. And we’re okay now.”
Mom looked like she was about to ask him something, but Vivvy jumped back in to show him a picture she’d drawn and commandeered the next ten minutes. It was good. There’d beenso much pressure to say everything that needed to be said in the first ten minutes that he could relax now and give Vivvy the time she deserved. When the video did come to an end, he felt confident that he could focus all his attention on getting through the next challenge and keeping Candace’s spirits up.
He continued to sit at the dinner table for a while, staring at the blank tablet, letting the cameraman get that sad footage they loved to play after these calls. If he was the only one who could be broken by a call home, he had to give Mike and the rest of the higher-ups what they wanted. After a suitable amount of time, he said, “You mind taking your dinner break now? I could use some privacy.”
The man put the camera down and nodded sympathetically. “I got two kids at home, myself. I miss them like crazy, but we work these crazy gigs for them, right?” He let himself out, and the corner of Laurin’s lip pulled up.
He wanted to thank Candace appropriately, and he’d just scored an hour to do it.
Chapter 18
“Hey, Candace?”
She hoped Laurin wasn’t about to ask her how she’d managed to get her minutes transferred to him. It wasn’t like there was a phone in her bedroom. She’d had to crawl out her window to flag down a crew member to radio to Mike. The transfer was easy enough, but the grip also had to get a ladder so she could climb back up through her window. She could have waited on the porch, but obviously she wasn’t thinking clearly.
She set her book down on the dresser and headed into the kitchen, immediately squealing and turning away.
Laurin was standing there without a shirt on.
Only after she turned away dramatically did she realize it was fine for him to be shirtless — it was just man nipples, no big deal — but she’d already made a fuss of it, so it was too late to wheel it back.
“I’m so sorry! I thought you wanted me—do you need me to grab you a shirt?”
“I do want you,” he said softly, his voice husky.
The tone had her curling her toes, but she didn’t look back at him. She couldn’t. That single flash before she’d turned away was enough that she didn’t think she’d be able to look away a second time.
“I want to thank you, Candace. This is how I’d like to thank you.”
“By . . . taking your shirt off?”
“Look at me, Candace.”
She hazarded the tiniest peek.
His hands were on the button of his pants.
He was tan and firm, and his chest was smooth and rippled with the muscles of a man at his peak and ready to run a hundred yards without breaking a sweat.
The thought of him breaking a sweat had Candace’s cheeks warming. And his hands were on the button of his pants.
“If you don’t want me to thank you like this,” he said carefully, his words controlled as his hands worked so slowly that she knew he wouldn’t go any further without her word, “I won’t. I’ll just say it, and we’ll go back to our puzzles. I will absolutely not do anything more unless you tell me to.”
The answer was so easy. Candace had been low-key obsessing about this for a while now, and she’d already attempted to make this move and been shut down for it. She wanted this.
She was paralyzed.
“It’s just you and me here. The cameraman is taking his dinner break. We’ve already had the good footage taken. But I need your agreement here. I won’t be mad at you if you say no. If I’m wrong, that’s on me.”
But that button was about to slide right through that buttonhole. She couldn’t look away. Her ex had never done anything like this. He had never done anything to seduce her,had only ever expected it of her. A quick undressing next to the bed, and if she wasn’t ready, that was on her.
